can only say I
'What they really doubt,' rumbled the Secretary of State, 'is the motive for our patience. Isn't that it?'
'With all due respect, Mr. Secretary,' said the ambassador, unwilling but staunch, 'that's it. The RUS isn't so concerned about its own view as about that of the Chinese and Indians. What
'They might make a terrible mistake,' said the President. “We have conveyed that to Peking, of course. You're aware the Chinese are serious about offering 'acts of God' as the explanation for the sinkings or whatever the hell they were?'
'Divine retribution for the Gujarat thing? I can't believe it, no sir,' said the ambassador.
'Neither do they, obviously,' said the Secretary of State. 'But the SPC must think that position might be useful if taken seriously by a lot of Judeo-Christian Americans. And that could weaken us from the inside. Guilt enfeebles the sword arm,' he said with a thin smile.
'Pity there aren't many Christians in the SPC,' said the ambassador.
While it may have been a pity, all three men knew it had been no accident. While the Socialist Party of China carefully nurtured its mosques, its Central Committee regulated the churches and synagogues on the mainland; and those were in major cities where Judeo-Christian worship could be watched easily. The Buddhist and Neo- Confucianist ethics of Chinese intellectuals depended strongly, as they had for centuries, on the concept of shame — to the virtual exclusion of guilt. Proper behavior in China was reinforced not by one's internal fear of wrongdoing, but by one's fear of being caught at it. The Japanese found it easy to deal with the difference; Islamic countries found it almost as easy. On the other hand, most western Russians, particularly since their post-collapse rapprochment with the west, were still molded from the cradle by basically Christian traditions of Godhead, and of guilt. In this dichotomy of basic motives, the Russian Union of Soviets was like the western world, sharing an ethic that looked inward for strength.
In China however, the individual was not the basic societal unit, but only apiece of one. China was hoping to exploit our notions of guilt as a weakness. RUS leaders were regaining tight control over Russian media, the better to exclude such disturbing ideas as the Chinese suggestion that God had taken two tankers in punishment for Gujarat. But Americans were free to choose their messages, and some would focus on the Chinese message in all honesty. Our President knew all too well that assumed guilt might be laid at the feet of his administration in the form of blame — especially by religious fundamentalists who had heard Senator Collier speak.
'Damn the SPC,' the President muttered aloud, '
'Not for attribution,' said the Secretary with quick humor.
'Just those who aren't reasonable,' said the President in irritation. 'You know who I mean.'
They knew, and changed the topic to guess at reprisals the RUS might select for the loss of the
It was not that the President was, as Collier hinted, godless; it was just that Collier was so spectacularly Godly. The Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints had no better exemplar of Mormonism than the best- known of its Council of Apostles, the organ-voiced Yale Collier. Educated at Brigham Young University, trained as a young missionary in Belgium, seasoned in argument on the Senate floor, Collier kept his farmboy accent and exuded a sense of destined greatness. He was also one of the best verbal counter-punchers on anybody's campaign trail.
In June the President had made a passing reference to Collier as a fundamentalist. Collier had tickled millions of holo watchers by his droll objection. He presumed, with a shake of the great head, that the President knew the term 'fundamentalist', among Mormons, meant 'polygamist'. The Senator had taken only one wife, his handsome mate Eugenia. Perhaps, Collier added waggishly, a man without children found it difficult to believe that a single union could be blessed with eleven children, but such was the case. He, Yale Collier, humbly awaited an apology.
By this stroke, Collier implied that the President was either ignorant of religious terms or casual about the truth; and stressed his own status as a virile family man;
For example: one satirist noted that the Collier union was in better shape than the national union. The current administration was cursed with two issues, while the Colliers were blessed with eleven.
One major political issue revolved around relations with the Russian Union of Soviets. The liberal administration favored stronger ties with the RUS, still the largest geographic entity on the globe though it had lost the monolithic control it had once exerted over the southern, strongly Islamic, border states. The RUS was currently getting American help toward its goal of making each state in its union self-sufficient in energy resources.
The conservatives under Collier were quick to point out that the US, with its hodgepodge energy programs, could not afford to help make Russians stronger — again! — than we were. A healthy RUS, they argued, was a threat to a fading America. The blossoming SinoInd romance was too obvious a threat for dispute.
Thus, for its Presidential campaign, conservatives linked the foreign issue to the domestic issue of energy programs. For a dozen years America had annually spent billions on fusion research, to be met largely by frustration as most avenues of study terminated in blind alleys. Physicists believed that clean, safe fusion power might yet be practicable, if research programs were expansive enough. But progress was slow at best. One by one, members of Congress yielded to the cries of a public that was paying higher taxes for its energy programs without a downturn in the costs of electricity, fuel, travel. Fusion research funds, pared in 1994, were cut to the bone in 1995. The administration protested: 'You can't expect stronger progress from a weakened program.'
First give us tax relief,' the electorate seemed to be saying, 'and other progress second. We can wait for more tokamaks and the other fusion mumbo-jumbo — and don't mention fission to us again.'
By this topsy-turvy expectation, the American public further delayed their fusion panacea, and found alliance in a coalition between big business and conservative religious groups. Big business, as always, felt galled by taxation. Besides, as long as energy could be kept expensive to the consumer while industry got it cheaply by tax relief, one could make a profit selling an endless array of windmills, solar panels, storage batteries, and alcohol stills to two hundred and fifty million Americans. This view accorded well with groups that — with some justification — yearned for an earlier time. Fundamentalists tended to favor a still that yielded grain alcohol from corn in a process one controlled at home, over an electric outlet that drew power from a distant turbine/alternator in a process one couldn't understand at all. Besides, you couldn't drink electricity…
Gradually, Americans were reviving a general opinion that muscle power was more ethical than machine power; that simplicity was next to Godliness. The tenets of Mormonism, outwardly simple in its absolutes and its demands that each Mormon household be as independent as possible, became more attractive. One out of every twenty-five Americans was now an LDS member — ten million Latter-Day Saints. They comprised a heaven-sent bloc of patriots, and a hell of a bloc of votes. Privately, the Secretary of State suspected that the country might prosper under a Mormon President. In a liberal democracy, the administration usually bowed to its citizens. In an honest-to-God theocracy the administration bowed only to revelation from Above.
Chapter Twelve
Quantrill was scouring his messkit after supper on Saturday when Tom Schell, without elaborating, told him he was wanted by the scoutmaster. Ted paused long enough to slip on his traditional kerchief, plodded through the dusk with a naive sense of mission in his soul. He felt sure that Little wanted to hear the truth until he entered Little's tent, saw the smugness in Wayne Atkinson's face.
'Sit down, Quantrill,' said Little. It was either the best or the worst of signs; for minor discipline, you stood at attention. 'What I have to say here is very painful for me.'
